Guillermo Del Toro Reveals More About His Plans For ‘Pacific Rim 2’

Now that we know Pacific Rim 2 is a solid deal, speculation and fan desires can start to bubble to the surface. Usually mum is the word on such things, but Guillermo Del Toro seems to have so much fun creating these comic book type projects that I don’t think he can help himself.

He sat down with the Wall Street Journal to talk Pacific Rim and revealed a lot more about the project’s march to April, 2017. From The WSJ:

Without spoiling anything, what can fans expect from Pacific Rim 2?

We are three years away, so to spoil anything would be fantastically silly of me. What I can tell you: [screenwriter Zak Penn] and I really went in, we started with [screenwriter Travis Beacham] about a year and a half ago, kicking ideas back and forth. And, admittedly, I said to Zak, let’s keep kicking ideas till we find one that really, really turns the first movie on its ear, so to speak. (…) It was hard to create a world that did not come from a comic book, that had its own mythology, so we had to sacrifice many aspects to be able to cram everything in the first movie. Namely, for example “the Drift” (editor’s note: the neural link between pilots of the giant robots, or jaegers), which was an interesting concept. [Then there was] this portal that ripped a hole into the fabric of our universe, what were the tools they were using? And we came up with a really, really interesting idea. I don’t want to spoil it, but I think at the end of the second movie, people will find out that the two movies stand on their own. They’re very different from each other, although hopefully bringing the same joyful giant spectacle. But the tenor of the two movies will be quite different.

I can only hope that doesn’t mean a character gets stuck in “the drift” or something. I didn’t buy my ticket to see memories play out in someone’s mind! Del Toro then went on to discuss the possible casting changes and firm dates for the project:

Do you plan on expanding the cast and adding new characters in Pacific Rim 2?

I’m hoping to bring the same idea I had in the first movie, that was to make it multicultural and humanistic as much as possible, to make characters from many nationalities or gender, to make them equal in the scope of the adventure, in the day-to-day of the adventure. So, we’re bringing a few characters that are new and hopefully doing good work managing those that survived the first movie. (laughs)

When do you expect production to start on Pacific Rim 2?

I start designing in six weeks. It takes me nine months to design a movie like that. People see the movie, and they have to see that we designed everything in the movie, from ID cards or patches, pamphlets, posters, signs, sets. I start with a core team for about six months designing the jaegers and the kaiju, you know, so we know how many kaiju, how many jaegers. We are creating some new jaegers and a lot of new kaiju. We start [designing the production] in August. (via)

I expect to be seeing more fake Jaeger designs in six weeks as well, so you people better get to work. Fartbot 6000 isn’t going to create itself and humanity needs a titan to defend its shores. With farts.

Del Toro also took a moment to talk about the comparisons between Pacific Rim and Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla:

Well, it’s a very different tone. What is great about Gareth is that he went for a really, an almost-Spielberg shock-and-awe tone that is very different from Pacific Rim. The thing is, when you deal with a world that has a single anomaly, meaning you have basically one monster or two battling each other, then you can take a darker tone and be metaphorical. Or when you have a single robot — namely, for example, Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant — you can, once again, be more reflective and build deeper into a theme than when you have to … this is a world where giant robots are possible, giant monsters are possible. So the tone has to be … I decided that it had to be more like an adventure movie. I used two analogies that were pretty invisible in the first movie: one was a sports movie, and the other was a western. I tried to bring characterization on the move. (via)

“And one of them was good,” says someone off deep within their parents basement. Or their high class condo. Wherever trolls live these days, I know they’re moving up in the world.

Probably one of the more interesting bits of the interview, aside from the main details of the Pacific Rim series, was word that Del Toro is not hopeful he will be able to revive his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness:

With this support from Legendary, do you have any hope that your adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness will be made?

That’s exactly what I discussed with them. I said to them, that’s the movie that I would really love to do one day, and it’s still expensive, it’s still … I think that now, with the way I’ve seen PG-13 become more and more flexible, I think I could do it PG-13 now, so I’m going to explore it with [Legendary], to be as horrifying as I can, but to not be quite as graphic. There’s basically one or two scenes in the book that people don’t remember that are pretty graphic. Namely, for example, the human autopsy that the aliens do, which is a very shocking moment. But I think I can find ways of doing it. We’ll see. It’s certainly a possibility in the future. Legendary was very close to doing it at one point, so I know they love the screenplay. So, we’ll see. Hopefully it’ll happen. It’s certainly one of the movies I would love to do. (via)

I think any news on the Lovecraft front is good news. It’s not hard to make a good, scary PG-13 horror flick and I think Del Toro has the imagination to make a project come to life and burst out of a rating. Also Lovecraft isn’t some sort of splatter horror parade of gore, so it works.

The entire interview can be read here and it features a lot of talk about The Strain on FX and how it was a move out of his comfort zone. Well worth a look if you can find the time.

Just because Del Toro is all super-geeky and excitable about movies doesn’t mean he gets a pass on this shit-heap. Went into this film ready to fully embrace and it was awful. Tried again on HBO and it’s still awful. It’s baffling that this flop has warranted a sequel.

In this day and age would anyone actually be upset if they let him make At the Mountains of Madness for theaters as a PG-13 and film his R/Unrated scenes for the blu-ray release? If that gets him the money he needs to do all the crazy stuff from that story I’m all for it.